Libya at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic

On 17 December, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a series of reports entitled “Conflict Zones in the Time of Coronavirus : War and War by Other Means”, which explores the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in conflict zones, such as Libya. Scholar and expert Frederic Wehrey contributed to the series with an article on Libya’s experience of the Covid-19 crisis. Wehrey demonstrates that the pandemic had ambivalent effects on Libya’s crisis, overlapping with security, political and social tensions. As highlighted by Wehrey’s report, a significant effect of the pandemic has been the mobilization of Libya’s civil society and local actors. However, the crisis has also been utilized by certain armed groups as an opportunity to assert their power. Wehrey reports that in Eastern Libya, there has been an acute militarization of the local public health response, while in Western Libya, there have been cases of militias diverting or blocking aid resources. Click here to read the report.